e Scott's Arms at
Barr. I dare say Mr. Henry Irving knows the house, for he is President
of the Literary Society there. The tale was told me by the landlord.
Three chartermasters sat at a table in the bar, and old Pountney
overheard their whispered talk.

'Didst iver drink port, Jim?'

'No; what is it?'

'Why, port--port wine; it's a stuff as the gentlefolks is fond on.'

'I reckon it'll be main expensive, then.'

'Oh, we can stand it amongst the three on us. Got any port wine,
landlord?'

'Yes, some of the finest in the county.'

'What's it run to?'

'Seven-and-six a bottle.'

'They figured it out,' the landlord told me, 'with a bit of a stump of
an ode pencil on the top o' the table, and when they'd made up their
minds as siven and sixpence was half a crown apiece amongst the three on
'em they ordered a bottle. I sent my man down the cellar for it, and
I went out to look at my pigs. When I come back again there they was
sittin' wry-mouthed an' looking at one another, wi' some muddy-lookin'
stuff in the glasses afore 'em. "Gentlemen," I says, "ye don't seem to
like your liquor." "Like it!" says one on 'em; "if this is the stuff
the gentlefolks drinkin', the gentlefolks is welcome to it for we." I
turns to my man, and "Bill," says I, "where did ye get this bottle o'
port from?" "Why," he says, "I got it from the fust bin on the left-hand
side." "Why, you cussid ode idiot," I says, "you've browt 'em mushroom
ketchup!"'

III

It was on May 25, 1865, that I enlisted in her Majesty's Fourth Royal
Irish Dragoon Guards. I was just past my eighteenth birthday, and, for
reasons not worth specifying nowadays, the world had come to an end.
Civil life afforded no appropriate means of exit from this mortal stage,
and I was in a condition (theoretically) to march with pleasure against
a savage foe. I was ignorant of these little matters, and was not
aware of the fact that the Fourth Royal Irish was mainly a stay-at-home
regiment.

My ardour for the military life was cooled pretty early. I dare say that
things have mended somewhat in the last seven-and-twenty years; but my
experience was in the main a record of petty tyrannies and oppressions,
at the memory of some of which my blood boils even unto this day. There
is a comic side to everything, however, and I can laugh over a good many
of my own experiences. I had a dinner engagement that day with a friend
in the Haymarket, and finding myself a little too early